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Know all the new legislation at Companies House?

We can handle all your Companies House filing for you, providing peace-of-mind and helping avoid potentially high penalties if you were to get it wrong!

Our dedicated Company Secretarial team offer a simple, catch-all solution to help you ensure all your records at Companies House are kept up-to-date, thus avoiding the increasingly high consequences – whether that be:

• strike off,
• fines,
• credit rating score issues or
• increasingly, criminal proceedings.

New legislation coming soon...

With new legislation on the horizon, things are going to get more complex.  Plus the implications of non-compliance will be more significant, but for a very low annual fee we can handle all this on your behalf – meaning you can get on with managing your business.

Contact us:

For further information on our Company Secretarial Services, please speak to Ann Gracie on 0141 221 2984, or email Ann at a.gracie@frenchduncan.co.uk. Or if you're an existing client, just speak to your main contact point.

Why do I need French Duncan’s help?

New legislative changes were introduced in August 2016 which made proper compliance with Company Secretarial obligations even more important. We have summarised below a few of the more important changes that were introduced:

• The Annual Return has been replaced by a Confirmation Statement.
• The time to file a Confirmation Statement has been reduced from 28 to only 14 days and not making the return makes the directors liable to prosecution and the company potentially being struck off and/or credit rating being affected.
• The Confirmation Statement introduces the requirement for a Register Of Persons With Significant Control (PSC). The PSC is intended to identify the people who have beneficial control of the company. Failure to properly complete the PSC carries a criminal penalty of an unlimited fine and/or up to two years in prison.

As you can see, failure to comply with the Company Secretarial responsibilities is treated very seriously and will lead to financial penalties, prosecution, disqualification of directors and the company being struck off the register. In the case of compulsory strike off, costs will be incurred to reinstate the company. It is therefore incredibly important that directors comply with their obligations.

Why you should never use your home address as a registered office

An officer incorporated a company some years ago and used their home address as the registered office, not realising that when the company was dissolved a few years later, their address would still appear on Companies House website in public view for a further twenty years.

Many years later, the officer had a change of circumstances in that they would be obtaining a large sum of money and realised their residential address was still available on Companies House website.

We were approached to offer advice on how to rectify the issue with the registered office.  

It soon came to light that the process to restore the company, change the registered office address and make application for the registered office address to be suppressed from previously filed documents was cumbersome and costly – in the region of £1,000. In this case the officer decided not to bother making the change, potentially putting themselves at risk.

As there have been known cases of identity theft where the information has been obtained from Companies House website, Companies House guidance is not to use a residential address as a registered office.

If you are incorporating a company, do bear in mind that this is why you should never use a residential address as a registered office address and more importantly, the consequences such a decision can have at a later date.

What about future legislation?

There are even bigger changes on the horizon, with complex new legislation at Companies House coming into force in 2021, coupled with a shift in role for Companies House away from it’s traditional ‘agency’ role to a ‘governing body’ with increased legal powers.

Our team are fully up-to-speed with these future changes and can help ensure your business complies now and into the future.